


Sands of Time

by pixiestickssss



Category: Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:40:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23451100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiestickssss/pseuds/pixiestickssss
Summary: It was the soft sound of a pot being stirred and the crackling of a fire that woke Boruto.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 19





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So due to being sent home because of the coronavirus and all unis going online, I now have a butt load of time sitting around doing fuck all. This has been sitting on my laptop gathering dust for the better part of two years and when I was doing a quick clean of my desktop (actually procrastinating as I have no time management skills and dislike doing actual work that will give me my degree) this popped up. I dusted it off and decided to finish this as it will give me something to do and hopefully will stop my brain from imploding from lack of use. 
> 
> As a warning, I have never seen any episodes of Boruto and know nothing about Boruto and his fellow baby ninja other than what a quick read of various character pages could give me so they're probably going to be a little OOC. 
> 
> This is not finished and is being written as I go with only a rough outline in mind of where I want to go...so who's ready to buckle in a read this train-wreck??? Tags will be added as I go, if you think any should be added, drop a quick comment :)

It was the soft sound of a pot being stirred and the crackling of a fire that woke Boruto. He stared above him and gradually realised that the dancing shadows above him was the craggy rocks of a cave roof.

The clinking came to the left of him. As he attempted to turn his head, a deep exhaustion rolled over his body. A groan escaped his lips and he sank back into the bedding.

A cold hand curled around the back of Boruto's head and lifted him up. The lip of a container pressed against his mouth and water trickled in. The cool liquid awakened something ravenous inside him and he drank as much as he could. When the container was lifted from his mouth, he made a noise in protest but a quiet voice hushed him.

"Don't try to speak. Conserve your strength."

Even as the voice spoke, Boruto felt the haze of sleep descend on him and he fell back into the abyss.

*********

The next time he woke, the cave was silent. The exhaustion had been replaced with a deep ache that settled in his bones. Boruto struggled upright and blinked blearily around the cave. Two lamps had been set up around the cave, giving light to an otherwise pitch-black space. The pot which had woken him before was supported over a pit with a tripod. Apart from an unrolled bundle of fabric which showed small vials and pots, the cave was bare of any other essentials. 

A soft scuffling sent all of his senses to maximum. He quickly turned to see who had entered only to nearly black out when a jarring pain erupted between his eyes. When his vision cleared, it was revealed that someone was crouching by the pot and stirring the contents again. Boruto could see steam lifting from the pot and was startled when his stomach growled. The stranger laughed softly and spoke, his voice low and raspy and unmistakably male with a strong Wind Country accent.

"I take it that you're hungry." The stranger moved over to the unrolled bundle and retrieved a small bowl. Boruto squinted, recognising the dents along the rim.

"That's my bowl!" He shouted in true Uzumaki fashion. Or tried to in any case. His voice cracked and hissed like he had screamed himself hoarse.

"Sore throat?" The stranger offered sympathetically. "That's no surprise considering you've been recovering for a few days."

A few days? What the hell?! Boruto's head spun.

"You've been here for two nights and almost three days." The stranger dipped Boruto's bowl into the pot and wiped off the excess with a cloth. He turned properly towards him and Boruto was finally able to see the stranger in detail.

Dressed in loose white pants with a sleeveless top and fabric covering the face and hair, in a darkened room it would be hard not to mistake the individual as a ghost. What drew Boruto's eyes was the dark patterns that covered the bare hands, arms and feet. He followed the sweeping patterns, seeing spirals, waves, triangles and abstract shapes in the ink.

"You like?" The stranger's voice was amused. Boruto raised his head to meet kohl-smudged green eyes watching him over the veil. 

"I've never seen anything like it before." Boruto admitted, eyes falling to elegant hands...holding the filled bowl. With barely a pause, those elegant hands passed the bowl to him.

"Go slowly," the stranger advised. "You've eaten very little over the past few days." He folded his legs and settled down, watching Boruto closely as he drank the soup. The soup was near tasteless with a few strange lumps in it, but Boruto could not care less. Despite the meager portion, he was full by the time the bowl was drained. As the bowl was taken back, it suddenly struck Boruto that he had eaten suspicious food given to him by a suspicious person in a suspicious cave and his team was nowhere to be seen.

"My team." He rasped out, catching the attention of the stranger who turned to look at him with one eye. "Did you do something to them?"

The eye closed in a slow blink. Clothing rustled as the stranger turned to face him. "How much do you remember?"

Boruto felt himself growing angry, the flames leaping to life in his navel and fanning into his chest as the question was avoided. "Where is my team?"

"Nothing evidently." This was delivered as a flat statement not posed as a question. Boruto growled - which came out as a squeak. He flushed. He was about as strong as a newborn kitten and he sounded like one as well.

Boruto was scrutinised for a handful of moments before the bowl was set down. "I found you half buried in a sand dune about ten kilometres south-west from here. When you say team, I assume you mean your Genin teammates and your Jounin sensei?"

Boruto remained silent. 'Never talk to an unknown individual about your mission'. Of course, this did not hold the same weight as it once did before the Fourth Shinobi War as the major villages were all on good terms with one another and village rivalries had died down to friendly competition.

The stranger did not press on the issue, picking up on his unwillingness to talk about that topic. "Whatever your reason for being in the desert, you were stupid. This is sandstorm season and these storms last for days. If you were travelling to Suna, then they should have sent a guide with you." He clicked his tongue in irritation and looked away. "Idiots."

Boruto bristled. "The storm blew up out of no-where! It wasn't Konohamaru-sensei's fault!" The moment he said the words, he wished he could snatch them back. The stranger stared back, head tilting. "So you are a Genin. That makes it even worse. Have you had desert training? What to do in sandstorms? How to protect yourself? How to build or find shelter? How to treat sand and windburn? How to find water and food if you become hopelessly lost?" When Boruto remained silent, he sat back. "This is why you are all stupid. Every child in Suna is sent to desert survival camps, civilian or Shinobi." He rose to his feet with a huff. "Honestly."

Boruto picked at the thin blanket covering him. He distantly remembered a wild wind blinding him with sand grains, doing his best to follow Sarada's outline through the whirling darkness, a sense of looming panic when that outline vanished that he was going to die here and his bones would become one with the sand dunes.

"Luckily for you, I was nearby. You would have died if I hadn't been. If dehydration hadn't killed you, the sting would have."

"Sting?" Boruto had been stung?

"Yes, scorpion. Specifically the Blue-Moon Scorpion." The stranger moved over to Boruto's feet and moved the blanket. Cold hands lifted his right leg and a finger gently pressed just below his kneecap. Boruto flinched from the sudden pain that shot up his leg and yelped. "It must have stung you while you were collapsed. If you had been moving, you would have died as the venom would have been pumped to your heart quicker." Green eyes raised to Boruto's. "You do know that when you've been stung or bitten by something venomous, you don't move, right?"

"I know that." Boruto snapped. "I just don't know Desert Survival 101." Green eyes dropped again. "Maybe you should consider learning Desert Survival 101. I won't always be here to save you."

Boruto pulled a face and then lay down again. "How did you save me?" He asked as his leg was placed down and covered with the blanket. "And how did I end up here in this cave if you found me ten miles away?" He waved an arm around to demonstrate before wincing as his shoulder cracked loudly.

The stranger took no notice. "Ten kilometres, not miles. I had Blue-Moon anti-venom on me so I gave you some so you wouldn't die. To get you here," he jerked his head to indicate the cave. "I carried you. You are very heavy for a ten year old."

Twitch.

"I'm twelve."

"Really? You're very short for a twelve year old."

Twitch twitch.

"I'm going to gather some more water. Don't go anywhere." The stranger slipped out of the room on soundless feet.

Boruto stared at the ceiling, the dust in the air catching the dim light from the lamps.

"...I'm not short." A hand traced an absent spiral pattern on the blanket. "...and muscle weighs more than fat."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol here's a short chapter

"What were you doing in the desert?" The voice of a child bounced off the rocky walls. The exasperated sigh from an older individual also echoed along the caverns. "Do you ever stop talking?"

"No. What are you doing here?" Boruto was doing slow sit-ups, careful not to move his right leg to much. The area where he had been stung was still swollen and red despite the days since the initial attack ("It wasn't an attack, you probably fell on it." "It stung me!)

The shoulders of the strange man who had saved him dropped. "I live here. That's all I'm going to say."

Boruto blinked at the short answer and then shrugged. Whatever, it wasn't his business to pry.

"...So do you have a name? I've been awake for two days now and I've been calling you 'the stranger' in my head. Can I call you something else?"

The grind of the pestle stopped. Boruto halted his exercises.

"Call me Aka."

"Really? I thought you would be called Shiro considering all you wear is white."

"Very funny."

"Why Aka though? You don't wear any red at all."

"I have red hair."

"Red hair? No way! My friend Chocho has red hair and everyone thinks she has the best hair out of all the Genin. Can I see your hair?"

"No."

"You're such an old man, no fun at all."

"For all you know, I am an old man."

"True. Let me see your face!"

"Get away from me! And don't move, you're still too weak!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A quick google translate informed me that 'Aka' is 'red' in Japanese and because I have no motivation to think up an actual name with meanings I'm sticking with this for now


	3. Chapter 3

"Ow, ow, ow - stop, stop, please!" Boruto must have been a serial killer in a past life to deserve this kind of pain. His eyes screwed shut and his hands crumpled the sheets in his tight grasp.

"Just breathe through it, the pain will fade." Aka pushed forward and Boruto almost screamed at the burn. His world narrowed to the feel of the ground against his back, the weight of the man on top of him and the pain in his hips.

"Just a little bit more..." That damnable voice soothed and Boruto shook his head frantically, barely able to breathe through the stretch-

"Ok, relax".

Air scraped its way through Boruto's lungs as Aka slowly lowered his leg back to the ground. "Holy shit, I think I almost died!" The look Aka sent him would have flayed a lesser man. "Stop whining. Your leg needs to be stretched out as the muscles and tendons have cramped up after the sting."

Boruto growled. Physical therapy sucked. He leaned over for the water container and took a large gulp. He had been in the same room, not allowed to stand for four days and Aka was starting to grate on his last nerve.

Aka.

Such a strange man. Despite only knowing him for a short amount of time, Boruto felt like he had met him before. Just something about him was so familiar. That sort of familiarity you get when you pass a photo of that old family friend for years and heard stories from parents then you meet them for the first time and you feel as though you know them so well. Or passing the same people everyday on the same street and seeing them outside of the street is jarring.

Boruto sighed and dropped back to the floor, staring at the same craggy ceiling that had greeted him when he first awoke. As they were deep in the rock structure, according to Aka, no light from the outside made its way in. Instead, crystals infused with chakra glowed, throwing soft light over the walls. He tilted his head towards the closest crystal, the facets shining.

"Hey Aka."

"Hmm?"

"What type of rock are these crystal things made of?"

"There's a mixture. The one next to you is crystal quartz as are the others on that side of the room. This one-," he pointed to a pale pink lamp. "Is rose quartz as are the two by the door and somewhere in here there is a bloodstone but it's a bit useless as a lamp so I only use that when necessary."

Boruto blinked dully at the lamp. "Right. Cool. And are they supposed to help me heal quicker or something silly like that."

There was a long pause and then the sound of Aka moving back over. "Of course not." He pushed away the white quartz, a harsh scraping sound echoing. "They're just crystal lamps."

He turned back to Boruto with a rustle. "Break time is over. Let's stretch again.'

Boruto flung an arm over his face and groaned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hahah did you think they were doing the dirty?? Hell no they were not as Boruto is a child and I've always viewed Gaara as asexual so there.
> 
> The rock lamps in this chapter (crystal quartz, rose quartz and blood-stone) are thought by some to aid with spiritual healing and cleansing, I am not one of these people but I do think that they are very pretty!! If anyone knows better gemstones / rocks that would be used in situations like these, pls comment!!
> 
> PS: the rocks are here for a reason, I didn't just chuck them in ;)


	4. Chapter 4

It was on the sixth day when Boruto was allowed to stand up and limp after Aka to an area for bathing. On this particular day, Aka wore tiny bells around his ankles so each step to the smooth ground chimed softly and echoed. The lamps held by both of them revealed the beauty of the tunnels, colours in the sandstone turning it into a continuous sunset where-ever they looked. Unfortunately this also had the effect of every tunnel looking the same.

"Where are we?" Boruto wondered, trying to remember if he had been told of a structure existing in the desert.

Aka turned down yet another corridor. "Have you heard of the Warren? Near the north-east side of the desert?"

Boruto could faintly remember Shikadai telling him something about that. The largest natural sandstone structure in the known world?

Aka nodded. "Yes, that's it." Boruto realised that he must have said that last part out loud. "Yes, you did." He flushed, well aware of his habit of talking his thoughts aloud. He glanced back up at Aka, who was looking steadily into the darkness ahead. Almost as he could sense Boruto's stare, he looked down at him, the light from the lamp reflecting off his eyes and creating an almost animal-like flash of pupils-

Boruto blinked, surprised by the glow. Aka was still watching him but the eerie reflection was gone.

"Are you alright? You look...spooked." Boruto looked ahead. "..Thought I saw something." He mumbled. Aka hummed and didn't reply, instead turning into a small alcove. Boruto's surprise turned into shock as the alcove opened into a massive cavern. Water reflected the light of the lamps and threw patterns onto the roof.

"What is this place?" He breathed in awe.

"It's a bath for you. You smell."

Boruto scowled as the awe as replaced by the familiar irritance. "Of course I smell! I haven't been able to clean myself for over a week!"

"Yes, but you have full function of your leg and - more importantly - you are alive, which is more than I can say for other people who were stung. Now strip."

"Wha-? No! Leave!" Boruto shrank back, gripping onto his filthy top as though Aka was going to leap forward and rip it off him. Aka rolled his eyes. "You have nothing that I haven't seen before. I'll turn around if you're that worried." Boruto glared at the white cloth covering the head of his annoying savior and resisted the urge to throw clothes at him. Instead, he quickly pulled off all his clothes and dropped them into a messy pile on the ground, before hurriedly slipping into the water.


End file.
